Human of the Year
by Dr Whatsit
Summary: 'The door closed behind her with no reprimand for his use of her title'. A collection of oneshots that explore the outcome of Colima. These focus mainly on Natalie.
1. One

Author's note: This oneshot, along with the next several after it, were meant to be pieces to another story I was planning. These sparkled brighter to me than the other bits, and spurred their own sort of loose plot outside of aforementioned planned piece. Out of the ashes...they say.

* * *

[One]

**.**

"It's good to see that you've rejoined the trial."

It finally seemed that Natalie had put her wide-eyed optimism in check, and while she smiled as she spoke, her eyes betrayed no inclination that she'd spent more time than necessary hoping for his return. The warmth in her demeanor was still there, but the empathy and naivety that always shared a dual place in her eyes had vanished, only to be replaced with a kind of compassion that had to be distributed fairly to everyone. She was aware of the change as much as the nurses who witnessed her working with the Recklinghausen trial patients. The difference couldn't be shown in a series of before and after pictures; only through careful observation could it be detected, and enough time looking into mirrors had been spent to give her the needed insight.

Barret had changed as well. The tumors that had begun maiming his body in his late twenties, making his life a continuous hell, were no longer just plaguing his face, arms, and legs. The bitter cynicism that accompanied the disease had faded although the tumors had spread. Perhaps the knowledge that dying alone wouldn't spare him the pain of living had altered his mood, or perhaps he decided that a doctor with such good bedside manner shouldn't be treated with fickle indifference. Either way, he had changed, and while physically the change wasn't for the better, socially it was.

"I made it past spring," he answered the non-question, giving their conversation a point of reference while she checked his stats.

"Which I'm thankful for," she gave him one of those soft smiles reserved for other patients, and he shifted uncomfortably under the light she flashed carefully in his eyes.

"We've altered the medication," she intoned as she moved away from where he sat, making notes on the clipboard she always brought to his physicals. "No one is suffering from rashes any more."

That was good. He knew that was good, and while he should be pleased that this new medication might be the trick, a doctor's somberness goes a long way at putting a blanket on pleasure. "I saw that it was still double-blind."

She nodded as she moved back. "No one likes not knowing," she admitted, instructing him to carefully stretch his arm so that she could retrieve a small sample of blood.

"Surely, if the medication is working, you can see who is getting better and worse, though?" There was a time, when he had begun his first trial in Minnesota, that he would get queasy at the sight of blood. But he'd long since become accustomed to the sight. In fact, anymore, the only time he experienced nausea was when he looked into the mirror.

Natalie gave a small tilt of her head, aware of how close this conversation was to their last. As she capped the vial and slid it into the pocket of her lab coat, she thought of how tempted she had been the year before to figure out if he was receiving the medication or the placebo. Looking at him, and knowing that now, more than ever, his life depended on receiving the correct pill, she didn't want to know. In fact, she hardly wanted to think about it.

"That's true," she stated, "but you'll never know unless you try."

I am trying, he said in his head. Smiling, he took the white pill she handed him and popped it into his mouth. Years of practice allowed him to swallow it without the small, paper cup of water she held up for him. He took it anyway to wash down the taste, and nodded to let her know it was done.

"The NIH was worth a second chance," he said as she began to pack away the equipment she had used on him. They would be sanitized and used later that week on him again, he knew.

She allotted him another one of the smiles that the other patients usually got, and he finally understood what the mutual feeling in the room had been since the physical had started. Unease. Maybe it was just her unease and he was feeling it? Or, perhaps, having noted the change in which she regarded him, he had begun to feel uncomfortable as well.

"I'll see you on Wednesday."

Barret gave a slight bob of his head. He had lived to see spring, to see his neighbor's flowers grow and to help her pick them. He'd even made it to summer, the mild days of June and the hot days of July, much longer than he had thought he would the year prior. He had a promise to keep with his doctor, he knew, but it seemed that the woman he had made it with was putting him in check with her kind eyes.

The bargain was off.

He was, after all, just one of her patients in a trial.

A year does a lot to change someone, he thought.

"I'll see you, Wednesday, Dr. Durant."

The door closed behind her with no reprimand for his use of her title.


	2. Two

[Two]

**.**

Authority gives one the power to change the lives of others, and that power comes with a weight that only a few can bare lightly. It had always been easier working with the complying leaders of the rooted teams of the NIH, their supervisors always listened, followed orders, gave her a modicum of respect. The trouble with Stephen Connor's team, Kate Ewing had learned years prior, was not that he lived with a warped view of who she was and what she did, but that he'd allowed that view to filter down to those under _his_ authority. Arguments were easier to control if they were behind wooden doors, but the NIH had more glass than timber, and so his flock had always been given a good view of their verbal scuffles.

She'd played the doctor once, the hero in a white lab coat wielding a stethoscope. It had been an era she wouldn't trade for anything, but she had grown out of that role long before it had grown out of her.

Unlike Connor, Kate had learned she couldn't spend her life saving others; the guilt of losing people had become repressive, constricting in a way that someone with her intermediate strength could not bear. She'd given the institutes her eight years of service in the field, and then she had hung up her lab coat and put away her gloves. Why he disliked her for it now, she had always had trouble understanding; Natalie Durant was a much better pathologist than she had been, much quicker and precise with the equipment. It wasn't as if she'd left him with someone incompetent for the position and what it called for...oh no...it was that she'd left.

It had taken some time to get use to the high heels, the business suits and skirts, but if one was going to be subjected to the public..._no_, if they were going to be the face of the NIH, then they could not wear jeans and boots. They couldn't be blunt any longer, or coddling, or pleasing. They had to speak in a language that only politicians could understand, in a language that the modern human being despised. They had to sell their likable soul to the Washington Devil and smile in the face of the calamity that was unfolding on the ladder below them.

The position had been enjoyable at first. She _had_ liked it. A director of the NIH could eat dinner for free every night of the week, was never left alone long enough to think about how alone they really were. They were held on a pedestal in the medical field and always had their seats reserved.

But the love had dwindled away after time, and now more than ever it had become a duty. The NIH needed money, and it was her responsibility to get it what it needed. If it meant wearing stiletto's and walking around with the stigma of 'bitch' following in her wake, then it was her responsibility to lose herself in something she didn't want to be. She was married to the Institutes, and if she wanted to keep her livelihood, then it was one marriage she couldn't abandon.

But she itched, she had since the beginning of Colima, not to climb backward on the chain of command she had spent her entire adult life working to reach the top of, but to experience what it felt like to directly help real people again. Kate held no illusions that the itch would be scratched, or, if it was, scratched for very long. But she wanted it, despite the odds, and knew that if anyone was going to let her work a case with them, it was not going to be Stephen Connor.


	3. Three

[Three]

**.**

The events Colima stood three weeks behind her, small specks of discomfort in her larger flow of memories.

Normalcy was not spending hours under a rotting pile of wood, pushing her way through busy hospital halls to reach a patient who was going to die if these people just didn't get out of the way, worrying that any minute news would come with a Spanish accent to tell her that the team was down to four or three or two, or running across dusty ground to collect the newest shipment of medication. There were assumptions among the NIH staff that the best elite team had seen everything, but Natalie knew that they hadn't seen anything that the world of disease could throw their way. She had once considered, during one humid Colima night, that upon returning to Washington DC she could bully the directors into giving her a secure, stationary position for the rest of her career. But that thought had faded away with dawn, leaving in its wake a new determination to survive the assignment and many more.

What she had learned upon returning, tired but well, was that their two months of hard work would be rewarded with one month of grounding. Pending the health of Miles and the leave of absence that Stephen had demanded, they would return to cases after a thirty day period of paid leave. Frank had accepted the kind offer with gratitude while Eva had vanished, likely making her way back to the foreign nation they had just left, leaving Miles to heal and Stephen the opportunity to go incognito.

Natalie, with her period of thirty days without case or worry, had returned to work in the Recklinghausen clinical trial. It was, after all, a study she had spent over two years working in. She, nor many of her patients, could afford another month of her absence. Whoever had set up their vacation time had not argued against her continued work, and therefore she saw it as an opportunity to keep her mind off of not working.

She was wearing down, though, her mood becoming something that resembled Stephen's if she spent too long staring into a microscope. Long nights saw her traveling to the break room to put a new pot of coffee in the brewer, a pot that would be drunk before her work saw an end. She went home to sleep, of course, but she often meandered back into her lab before the sun was completely above the horizon. And, in a particular moment of annoyance at the length of time it took to look presentable in public, she'd paid thirty dollars to have her hair lopped off to her shoulders. It had received more compliments than she had anticipated, and made putting herself together in the morning much simpler than it had been in nearly a year.

"Natalie."

This happened often, someone rushing into her lab during the middle of the day to direct her attention. She was used to the interruption in the gathering of information and so was able to complete focusing her microscope while looking up to greet the owner of the voice with her slightly divided attention.

"Director Ewing," her surprise tainted her voice, making the name sound as if it was a question.

This was, perhaps, the first time since Colima that Natalie had seen the Director in a pair of jeans and casual blouse, which was beginning to led to a lot of questions she would not ask. While the undertone of dislike between the two women had vanished considerably since Mexico, their relationship could hardly begin to be described as anything more than professional friendliness.

Kate's blonde hair had been swept up into a clipped bun, something that must have been done in a hurry. She eyed Natalie for a moment before seeming to come to a conclusion, "I got a call this morning from a hospital in Denver, I could use your help."

Natalie's hesitation was palpable.

But, just like that, a week before the month's end, the pathologist found herself agreeing to return to the field without the rest of her team.


	4. Four

**[Four]**

.

"Four patients, no casualties; even the cost of testing and treatment were low. For an advanced case of Glanders, we did well." Kate didn't know how to turn it off; instead of minding her breakfast, she was busy digging through not one manilla folder but two. She was Stephen Connor wrapped up in the body of a female _without_ the tendency to take swings at people (as far as Natalie was aware, anyway). The excitement of solving a puzzle was new as well, the waving of hands to elaborate a specific point of the investigation; Stephen never did that...

The pathologist watched her boss' boss while chewing her over-salted eggs. They _had_ done well, taking the camaraderie that had been forced upon them in Colima and reweaving it into something more…natural…in the past several days. Carrying a workload of five people, the pair had barely managed to find the appropriate time to rest, but there was something quaint about drinking coffee in an empty lab while utterly exhausted, sharing the company of only a single other high-strung person.

Five minutes past the recap of the case and into the summary of the financial report, Natalie set her fork on the table and reached for her coffee, "Kate."

"Huh?" it was a look of distraction, as if the Director had been unaware her company could actually speak.

Natalie took a hardy sip, "It's common to _relax _before heading back…eat, talk about things that don't really matter."

Blue eyes peered at Natalie over the black rim of reading glasses, which were removed by a pair of thin fingers, "All right."

Silence prevailed as both women focused on their breakfasts. The only interaction they had was when both reached for the hot sauce, likely trying to salvage an otherwise dissatisfying serving of eggs. Natalie watched the sheer amount Kate piled on and silently told herself to congratulate Frank. Excessive use of regular hot sauce was a symptom of having become addicted to his...

"Have you heard about the Lyme Trials?" Natalie ventured, one of the few newsletters she had read upon returning from Mexico had mentioned it. she'd had no one to discuss it with since.

Without missing a beat, the blonde snorted, "Who hasn't?"

Only most of America, Natalie thought, but she understood Kate's meaning. The schism that had grown in the medical community over the disease was a well touched upon one in the circle of infectious diseases. On one side were those who felt it was an easily treated disease, on the other were those who insisted it had chronic implications and deserved months if not years of aggressive antibiotic therapy. Licensing boards were taking those who treated the chronic symptoms to trial, threatening to suspend and even revoke practicing licenses for knowingly administering unnecessary treatment. The NIH stood with the former; Natalie was inclined to support the latter. She was silent about it, naturally, as her career depended on keeping people like Kate happy, but it didn't mean she didn't have a strong opinion. Her history wouldn't allow her not to.

"Are you asking as a scientist or as an NIH employee?" Kate continued, having read something in Natalie's expression. Her grip on her fork had loosened, signifying that she might possibly be game for this conversation.

Giving up on her eggs, Natalie reached for the toast, "Scientist."

She underwent another long moment of Kate's silent scrutiny before the Director began to speak, "Quote me on this and I'll have you filing paperwork for the next decade, but I think the IDSA are a bunch of sanctimonious asses. I've never liked insurance trusts, and they've got their eye on creating one. Most information we have on Lyme is hearsay based on a small corner of the research, and a group of fourteen doctors are looking to decide what is the only appropriate treatment for it. The conflict of interests there are unnerving..."

Natalie swallowed her bite and grinned, so there was a real doctor in there somewhere. "That's not what the NIH says."

"Do I look like I have the NIH tattooed to my forehead?" The lack of sleep had done Kate's conversational skills well.

"Invisible ink…"

"It's a career, not a doctrine…Why do you ask?"

Thinking of her mother, Natalie shrugged and turned her focus to her hands, "Small talk."

"About Lyme disease?" Skeptical was the word as well as the tone of voice.

"We aren't exactly on personal terms," Natalie confessed, a little more sarcastically than intended, "but I'm starting to not dislike you; the contrary really. If you quote me on that I'll hack your annual blood tests. I'm of the opinion that Lyme is both interesting and controversial enough for semi-cordial colleagues to discuss over breakfast…"

Surprisingly, Kate hid a smile with a rather adolescent roll of her eyes, "I have a cat."

Not entirely shocked by the segue so much as the person making it, Natalie furrowed her brows but played along, "A cat?"

"Maine Coon. He's bigger than a small dog and sheds like one."

"What's his name?"

Looking neither embarrassed nor contrite, Kate delivered her next statement with a bland expression, "Snuggles."

Natalie's peals of laughter refused to be tamed, filling the dinner and showing no signs of fading.

Shaking her head, Kate speared more of her egg, "I adopted him! He came with the name..."


End file.
